Clean Start: August 22, 2011

Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

Hurricane Irene strengthened as it barreled across the Caribbean toward Puerto Rico on Sunday on a course that could take it to Florida later in the week. [Reuters]

The New York Times editorial page joins the thousands of protesters coming to the White House — including 110 who have already gone to jail — in opposing the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. [NYT]

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and “Greenland is experiencing some of the most severe environmental impacts,” social researcher Lene Kielsen Holm concludes in a preliminary report on a north-to-south survey of Greenlanders. [AP]

Floods have forced more than one million people from their homes and damaged crops in parts of southern Pakistan still recovering from last year’s worst ever monsoon inundations that devastated the region. [Bloomberg]

A powerful tornado swept through a southwestern Ontario town on Sunday, killing one person and causing severe devastation in the picturesque community on the shores of Lake Huron. [AP]

The number of New Yorkers buying flood insurance has shot up in the past decade, driven by changing flood maps, cautious banks and a series of high-profile storms that have homeowners worried. [WSJ]

Two women and two children died Friday afternoon in a flash flood in Pittsburgh, following torrential downpours of 2 inches of rain in 37 minutes. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Tropical storm Harvey hit the coast of Central America on Saturday, lashing Belize with strong winds and rain and threatening to dump more on sugar- and coffee-producing areas in the region. [Reuters]